


the mirror dark

by NightsMistress



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Bad Decisions, Banter, Case Fic, F/M, one sided crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-05 02:52:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4162899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/pseuds/NightsMistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a wizardry intervention goes horribly awry, Nita and Ronan have to find out what happened and how to get home. Unfortunately for Nita, Ronan is hiding some secrets of his own which may become very pertinent in the hours ahead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the mirror dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mutuisanimis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mutuisanimis/gifts).



> Hi mutuisanimis! I asked you so many questions and I'm sorry for that. I hope this story satisfies all the expectations those sixteen million questions built up!
> 
> Thanks to my betas, who know who they are, for being great.

On the streets of Bray one early Saturday morning stood two teenagers, a girl and a boy, on the sidewalk.  The girl, tall for her age with shoulder length brown hair and a jacket to ward off the morning chill, was studying a patch of air with thoughtful detachment. Her companion, a tall boy dressed entirely in black, was staring at the same patch of air as if it had offended him personally. 

Nita Callahan, staring at the unravelling time patch with what she hoped was mild interest and not a blank expression on account of the time, thought that perhaps Dairine was right.  Perhaps it was true that only huge nerds would be in a foreign country at what felt like an obscene time of the morning, even if, at the time she had thought it rather hypocritical for a girl who disappeared before dawn to visit other planets to judge Nita about her life choices.  When she had pointed this out to Dairine, she had followed it up by pointing out that leaving before dawn was not something that normal people people typically did, especially if it was to a backwater town that didn’t even allow you to do the showy wizardries.

Nita thought that Dairine was being somewhat unfair about Bray, though the rest she had to admit was accurate. As she studied the unravelling time patch that she, Kit and Ronan had put in place a year and a half ago, she thought _maybe it’s just that wizardry here is more subtle_. Dairine had always liked the more high-powered wizardries that allowed her to blaze like the stars she was learning to manipulate, and now she wasn’t powerful enough to simply override the overlays that rested over everything like a particularly heavy blanket.  _Power,_ she thought _, is not going to solve this problem_.

The problem, from what Ronan had told her, was that the time patch had to be regularly maintained in order for it to not revert back to how it was ordinarily. In the past, he had taken care of it every few months, but as he had said in his message to Nita that had brought her over here, he had literally repaired it last week and it was already started to come undone.

“I feel like it does this deliberately,” Ronan opined, folding his arms.

“I feel that you’re ascribing sentience to something that is probably incapable of it,” Nita said, but wasn’t that confident in her assessment.  Life could express itself in any number of ways, sometimes in ways even the most cosmopolitan wizard could never have anticipated. While Nita, with her unique sensitivity to living things, could not sense any kind of sentience from their joint spell it had been created by three wizards that had later proved to be less than ordinary. 

As she studied the spell in a half-closed squint, she noticed something was different about the spell.  She could see Ronan’s repeated repair work on it, making the spell resemble nothing more than a patchwork quilt that eventually, if allowed, would blend into the overlays as if it had never not been there.  However, there was a thread of something unfamiliar woven into the spell.  Nita did not know every wizard in Ireland — that would be ridiculous — but she wondered. It both felt like it belonged, suggesting that it was cast by an Irish wizard, and that it was utterly foreign.

“Is that what you saw?” she asked Ronan, and gestured at the foreign spell.

“Yeah,” Ronan said.  “It wasn’t here last week.”

“What is it? Any ideas?”

Ronan shrugged.  “Absolutely none,” he said after a moment, still studying the patch. “When I saw it, I thought I’d better get you in.”

“Wow, it must have been serious to get a blow-in for it,” Nita said, raising her eyebrows.

Ronan’s expression turned sardonic as he looked at Nita.  “I figured: you broke it, you fix it.”

“I did not break it!  How could I have broken it if I wasn’t even here?”  It was Nita’s turn to fold her arms while giving Ronan a stern look.  “Besides, it was probably you who broke it.”

“Me?”  Ronan unfolded his arms and gesticulated in a way that Nita could only describe as indignant.  “I’ve been _fixing_ it! That’s hardly the same thing at all.”

“Of course,” Nita said.  “That’s why you brought me in. Plausible deniability.”

Ronan made an exasperated noise.  “Let’s just get on with it. It’s too early in the day for this.”

Nita raised her eyebrows.  “It’s ten o’clock, your time.  If anyone should be complaining about it being _too early_ it should be me.”

“That’s because you’re insane,” Ronan said, but the smile took the sting out of his words.  “I am serious about getting this done, mind, before I come to my senses about your addition.”

Nita nodded her agreement and turned her attention to the wizardry that she and Ronan had devised on their way over to Bray from their respective homes.  Ronan’s usual spell had worked well enough in keeping it intact, but it was Nita’s suggestion that they needed some kind of tracking spell on the strange shadow that permeated the patch in order to find out where it had come from and what it was meant to do. Ronan’s initial view had been to leave it well alone and flag it for a Senior’s attention, but he was eventually won over.

“You did agree to this,” Nita pointed out.

“I know, and that’s my problem. I really shouldn’t listen to American girls with Ideas about How Things Should Be Done.”

Nita privately thought that he must enjoy following her suggestions, as otherwise he wouldn’t keep doing it.  She did not vocalize it, but something of it must have come across in the way she was looking at him, as Ronan added, “Besides, if I didn’t go along with it, you’d only keep up at it.  It’s just easier in the long run.”

Nita could not contain her need to roll her eyes this time.  “Let’s get on with it before you twist yourself in knots trying to justify why you know that following me is a good idea.”

Working with Ronan was not like working with Kit. Kit was able to anticipate her needs and simply be what she needed when she needed it, like a second set of hands, and she hoped that she was much the same for him. Ronan, either by virtue of their not having worked together for as long as she had with Kit or his own uncertainty about their course of action, was content to simply follow her lead and do what she wanted when she asked for it.  He was, however, even more reticent than usual, and she wondered what his problem was. 

The first half of the spell took, and the patch fastened itself more securely to this timeline.  _Now for my changes,_ Nita said to Ronan.  _Are you ready?_

 _Yeah,_ Ronan said.  _Lead the way._

That spell did not take as well as the patch.  Nita felt the probe of their tracking wizardry sink into the spell woven into the patch.  The probe fell for what seemed to be forever, before landing somewhere and latching on.  That was to be expected. That was how they had designed it to work while travelling from Dublin to Bray, after all.  What was not expected was the sharp tug on the other end, as if something powerful and desperate had grasped onto their spell.  That hurt, and Nita closed her eyes against the bright pain that flared behind her eyes. What was equally not expected was that the tension remained between the two wizards and the tracking probe for a moment, as if testing the strength of the connection.

Then whatever had their probe began to pull them through.

Nita was shocked for a moment, as such a thing really shouldn’t be possible, before trying to untangle themselves from it.  She could feel Ronan’s desperate attempts to do the same.  She was sure that this was not some strange Irish thing, in part because of Ronan’s complete confusion as to what on earth was going on, and in part because it felt odd.  It was too powerful for any sane wizard to do on Earth who was not fresh off Ordeal, and even now, as she struggled to free them from their own probe, she could sense a terrible, ancient regret for a past wrong.  

With one last, desperate heave, Nita tried to pull herself out. She saw stars as the connection retaliated in kind. Her concentration broke, and that was the end of her ability to struggle.   She could feel the peculiar dislocation that came with involuntary teleportation, a darkness so black it was blue, and then she saw nothing at all.

* * *

 Any wizard who spends time out of their home atmosphere and in atmospheres hostile to life as they once knew it learns very quickly to have a half-triggered spell sitting at the back of their minds to create a bubble of heat and breathable air in case they’re ever transported somewhere unsuspecting. It was, after all, a commonly-played trick by the Lone Power that tended to be catastrophically effective towards the underprepared wizard.

As such, when Nita took in a breath of frigid air, it was breathable. Or at least, the mix of gases that made up the air inside the bubble would not immediately suffocate her; the difference was rather academic as she curled up around the stabbing pain in her chest as her lungs seized up, coughing and gasping around the obstruction of her own muscles.  She hadn’t had an experience like this since before Bobo had come to take up residence within her, and it was thoroughly unpleasant. 

 _Sorry,_ Bobo said, sounding more apologetic than she’d ever heard it before. _There’s not a lot of energy here to use_. 

She took a breath, held it in her lungs until they ached from need instead of from cold, and then let it go. In the bitterly cold air it condensed as a pallid white cloud.  “Can you heat up the air here, now that I’m awake?” she asked.

 _Of course,_ Bobo said. _But you two can’t stay here too long._

Something in Bobo’s tone made Nita struggle to sit up and look around. Ronan was lying within arm’s reach, pale and unconscious, breathing shallowly the air that Bobo had created for the two of them.  She reached for his wrist; his pulse was strong.  She didn’t need to check his pulse, as wizardry would have worked fine, but it was reassuring to have something warm and familiar in her hand.  He was shivering like she was, but it was dying down as the bubble of air heated up.  He should wake up soon.

That satisfied, she looked at her surroundings.  The ground was covered with a peculiar frost that she recognised after a minute as frozen oxygen, settled into glassy pools over fine, crumbling grey dirt.  She picked up a handful of that dirt and let it sift through her fingers, and was disquieted by the fact that it had not supported life in a very long time. There had been an atmosphere here once, a long time ago, with life that had breathed air, stared at the stars and dreamed, but they had slowly faded away into nothing.

She shook her head sharply, wondering where that impression had come from.  _I really need to get a handle on my precognitions_ , she vowed to herself.

Finally, she looked at the sky. The stars were a cold red in the pitch of the night sky, arranged in constellations she did not recognize at first until she squinted. She shuddered at what this meant; the stars were flying away from each other, far faster than they should be.  Entropy was always running, and the universe was always expanding, but this cold pitiless emptiness disturbed her more than the Pullulus ever had.  The Pullulus was a malevolent darkness between the stars, but here there was nothing at all.  Even the background echoes of the big bang itself had long since faded away. 

“Where are we?” she wondered aloud.  

 _Earth,_ Bobo said.  _When you repaired the time patch, you were ‘sent sideways’._

“This is _Ireland_?” There was little here of the Ireland that Nita knew. Even the overlays, the bane of every practicing wizard, were gone entirely.   It was nearly impossible for her to fathom, and she was relieved that it was Ireland and not New York that they found themselves in. She didn’t think she could cope with a lifeless, desolate patch of dirt where her once vibrant city had been.

On the ground beside her, Ronan breathed deeper, a sign he was beginning to stir, and then coughed convulsively. It was a rude awakening and one for which Nita had some sympathy.  Bobo told her that he was as uninjured as she was, but she supposed by the way he curled around his chest, hand pressed near his heart, that the scar from where the Spear pierced him was quite painful in the cold.  That, she could do something about.

“Morning, sunshine,” she said, after easing the ache in his chest from the freshly healed scar.

Ronan somehow was able to roll his eyes even while struggling to breathe around coughing.  “Thanks,” he managed.

“No problem,” Nita said.  “I didn’t want to be the last person on Earth.”  The joke fell flat in the lifeless air, and she winced.

“It would kill your dating life,” Ronan agreed. “When are we?” 

“The entropic death of the universe, I guess,” Nita said.  “Though it sounds stupid when you say it like that.”

Ronan sat up and looked around.  His expression was strange, of someone who was remembering something he found troubling, even disquieting. There was no surprise in his expression though, instead grim resignation and a kind of fatalism; he looked like a person who had wanted to never see this landscape but who had never dared to hope that such a want could ever come true.

“Wait a second,” Nita said, recognizing that expression if not necessarily how it came about. It was the same expression he had worn when she had visited Ireland a year ago, when he was remembering things that he should not from times that he had never lived.  “When, not where?”

“I know _where_ we are,” Ronan said. He sounded annoyed, but at what Nita wasn’t quite sure.  “I was told about this once.  There are universes further along than ours, or ones where wizards never came up at all.”

There was something in how Ronan spoke that made it very clear who had told him: the Champion, right-hand agent for the One himself — insofar as any Power had a gender at all — and who, until a few months ago, had been cohabitating Ronan’s body and soul.  The potential meanings behind this were dizzying.

“Do you mind telling me?”

“Earth,” Ronan said.  “Or at least a planet that once was called Earth. I doubt it has a name now; you’d need the Speech for that and for someone to say it.”

“Not my question,” Nita said.  “I meant you telling me what you’d been told.”

“Oh,” Ronan said. He shrugged, his gaze shifting behind Nita to the desolate landscape behind her shoulder.  “No, that was it.”

Nita knew that a wizard should not lie, as the universe is attuned to a wizard’s words whether they use the Speech or not, and so a careless comment can have dramatic consequences later.  However, there was a difference between lying and not telling all of the truth that you know of, and to her mind Ronan’s comment fell perilously close toward the latter.

“Ronan,” she said, scowling. 

Ronan’s gaze flicked to her face from his careful contemplation of a dead rock. “What?” he said. It was more of a growl, which put Nita on firmer territory. 

“You will tell me if anything you remember becomes important, right?”

Ronan scowled.

Nita folded her arms and raised her eyebrows. She was in the right about this, and Ronan trying and warn her off the subject meant that he knew it as well. “Yes?” she prompted after a tense moment.

“Yes,” Ronan said.  His sigh was very martyred, which Nita dismissed as mere melodrama.  “We spoke about a lot of things,” he said finally. “I’ve told you everything I know that is relevant. If anything else comes up, I’ll tell you, but I really don’t know what _is_ yet.”

“All right,” Nita said.  She brushed her hair from her face, a largely unnecessary gesture in a world without wind, and tucked it behind her ears.  That done, she fished her manual out from her claudication.

 _You don’t really need that_ , Bobo said. The spirit of wizardry sounded aggrieved.

“It’s easier for Ronan and I to plan if we can both see what we’re talking about,” Nita said.  She opened her manual, still a little thicker than usual from when they had all been appointed temporary Seniors, and rested the spine and one cover on her leg.  The other cover she supported with her hand — just because it was a manual didn’t mean that she should get into bad habits in regards to caring for books — and flipped through the pages for a map.  The map was rather bare, which made sense given that she couldn’t see anything on the horizon indicating civilization as she knew it.

“I could just see it in my manual,” Ronan said, but studied her open manual nonetheless. 

“There could be something for us here,” Nita said, pointing to the only marked landmark on the page. 

“It is the only thing here,” Ronan agreed.  “Very well, let’s go beat up the Lone Power.”

“What makes you think that the Lone Power is here?”

Ronan pointed at Nita. “You’re why.  You have had the busiest career of anyone I know — bar Kit, of course, because it’s the _same_ career — and if the Lone Power is here it’s going to come right at you.”

Nita was fairly sure this was not a compliment. “I don’t always run into the Lone Power. I didn’t on Mars.”

“You know, most wizards do loads of interventions without the Lone Power making a _personal_ appearance.” 

It was Nita’s turn to roll her eyes at Ronan. While she was relieved that he no longer was wearing that terribly haunted expression of before, the amusement at her expense was not welcome.  She did not grace his comment with a reply, instead closing her manual, standing up and brushing the dirt from her jeans.

“Are you coming?” she asked. “Because I can leave you here if you want.”

Ronan sighed and rose to his feet.  “Someone has to keep you out of trouble,” he said with an exaggerated sigh.  “Might as well be me.”

“You? Keep anyone out of trouble?” Nita said, eyebrows rising archly as she did.  “Under your watch Kit ended up possessed by a Martian wizard.”

“It was his decision to split up, against my recommendation,” Ronan said with utmost dignity.  “If we had done as I wanted, the Martians would never have got a foot in.”

“As you say,” Nita said. She quietly held suspicions that Ronan was in fact right, but that didn’t mean she would desist teasing him about it.  With the severity of their predicament crushing down on them both, she needed what little levity she could get.  

“Disbelieving me already, I see!” Ronan raised his chin, an action that was all the more comical for how exaggerated it was.  “You’re a cruel woman, Juanita Louise.”

“Enough with the Louise,” Nita said darkly.  She sketched out a circle on the ground with a foot encompassing both her and Ronan. “Ready?”

“Any time,” Ronan said.  “I’ll get the next transit.”

Nita closed her eyes and began the transit. Despite her eyes being closed, when the spell took effect everything went so black she thought it was blue.  Then they were gone, leaving behind only the soft fall of sublimating carbon dioxide in their wake.

* * *

When her vision returned, she opened her eyes to a four-way intersection of corridors, the floor thick with a carpet of dust. It was fortunate that Bobo’s bubble of air was resistant to dust, otherwise Nita was sure she would never stop sneezing.  Their arrival had stirred up a whirlwind of dust that made it nearly impossible to see, but Nita was able to make out a number of thick cables the size of her wrist running from ceiling to floor along each corner of the intersection.  Despite the cold, they seemed to be quite intact.

She had memorized a spell for light, and cast it in a matter of moments. It seemed that Ronan had much the same idea.

“Well,” he said, the light hovering over his shoulder casting strange shadows down the corridor to their right..  “This is creepy.”

“Yeah,” Nita said, casting her light into a nearby open doorway in the upper left hand side to see what was inside.  It looked like an abandoned science classroom, with high tables and stools and a blackboard at the front. A thick layer of dust lay on all flat surfaces, and Nita’s movement towards the door caused it to billow out in clouds.  “Like some kind of horror movie.”

“I read a book like this,” Ronan said.  He sounded nervous. “It didn’t end well.”

“Let’s not give anyone any ideas,” Nita said firmly. “Instead, let’s go find some records or something.  If they built this—” she gestured at the building around them, “Then they have writing.”

“Like an apocalypse log?”

She wished that Ronan hadn’t said that, because he had articulated what she had feared.  She knew that eventually the universe would die; such knowledge came with being a wizard. One could not stall what one did not know was coming. However, the Sun was not a red giant in the sky, but instead a sad cinder around which a ball of dirt revolved, which went against everything that Nita knew about the lifespan of the Sun.  The more she thought about it, the more she felt that something had brought forward the death of this universe. If it was the Lone Power, then it was a version of that Power more genocidal than Nita had encountered for some time. 

“Yeah,” Nita said heavily.  “Like an apocalypse log.”

“Right, got it,” Ronan said.  “Should we split up?”

Nita honestly wanted to say no, they should stay together. She thought that Ronan might laugh if she said that she was afraid that there might be ghosts, as there were ghosts in Ireland and she thought that he might be inured to their presence by now.  On the other hand, judging by the tattoo he was tapping out on the wall, perhaps he was as anxious as she about the whole thing and perhaps splitting up would serve to contain their anxiety rather than cause it to become synergistic.

She missed Kit.  It was about now that he would take her hand in his and make some quip that would cause her to both laugh helplessly and be ready for the next challenge. She did like Ronan but he couldn’t set her at ease like Kit could.

The look Ronan was giving her in the dim light of their wizard lights was peculiarly sympathetic, and she wondered just what he had heard of her thoughts. 

“Not that much,” he said. “You just have an expressive face.”

“You know me that well?”

“I see you more often than I see most of my relatives.”  His tone was light, but there was something sharp and tense in his words, like a sword blade with edges too sharp to see clearly.  Some of it was undoubtedly due to their surroundings. Almost anyone would be tense.  But she had a feeling it was more than that.

“Is there something going on with your family?”

“No,” Ronan said, too quick to be anything but a refusal to talk about the subject.  Nita let it go.  If there were difficulties in his relationship with his parents — and she knew through Kit that Ronan still had not told his parents that he was a wizard — then perhaps it was better for her to let it go. It wasn’t a situation where he lived at home and so was subject to their rules, as she had been there when he had moved out for the university semester a few weeks ago, and so it was probably a matter where a wizard should not interfere, regardless of her own personal views on the subject.

“I’ll go this way,” she said, pointing to their left, “and you go that way.”  It was not the smoothest of transitions, and by the sidelong look Ronan was giving her he was barely refraining from commenting on it.  Apparently he managed to find the internal strength to resist.

 _I can make sure that the map is updated with what you see_ , Bobo said.

“Sure, let’s do that,” Nita said.

Ronan did not refrain from raising his eyebrows this time.  “Talking with your imaginary friend again?”

“Keep that up and you won’t get to find out what we were saying,” Nita said.

Ronan snorted.  “As if you’d keep it a secret for long.”

“Long enough to annoy you,” Nita said.  “So, about three seconds.”

Ronan conceded the point with a rueful nod.

“Bobo can link up your map and my map in the manual, so we can keep track of everything we see.”

“And we can keep talking to each other anyway,” Ronan added.  “What? This is a creepy abandoned post-apocalyptic shelter at the end of this universe. I’m _allowed_ to be a wee bit freaked right now.”

Nita laughed helplessly.  “And I thought you’d be the one laughing at me,” she explained.  “I’ve been thinking there are ghosts here!”

“Probably not,” Ronan said, obviously trying to sound cheerful.  Instead, it sounded ghoulishly awful. “There’s not enough energy to sustain them.”

“Thanks for sharing that,” Nita said. “I’m going to leave now so that you don’t do it again.”

“Any time!” Ronan said, heading down the corridor to their right.

Nita thought about waiting for him to go around the corner, but decided that if she stayed, she would likely lose her nerve. Instead, she walked to the left to the intersection, and then turned right.  The door was locked, but by mechanical and not electronic means. Nita knew some tricks from hanging out with Kit about how to handle a mechanical lock, and so was able to coax the door open.

She shone her light inside, making a face as her movement inside the room caused yet another cloud of dust to billow in front of her.  _I’m going to get really sick of this_ , she observed wryly to herself.  Then the dust settled, and her breath caught in her throat.

It was a school classroom, judging by the way the desks, set at variable heights that would accommodate a small child to a teenager, were arranged facing the blackboard.  There was none of the usual paraphernalia that Nita would expect to see in a classroom however, such as textbooks, or computers, or even posters on the walls. Instead on every flat surface from the walls, to the ceilings and floors, and even the desks was the Speech. Or, at least Nita assumed it was the Speech. It glowed faintly as she shone her light over it in the unique way that characters of the Speech did to practitioners looking for them, but she couldn’t understand what it was trying to say. 

 _Record this_ , she told Bobo as she began to search the desks for trays.  While she did that, she also sent a copy of a ‘photograph’ to Ronan’s manual of the room.  _Check this out!_

 _I’ve got that too_ , Ronan said after about ten minutes.  _Do you think if we lifted the floorboards we’d find it written on the other side too?_

Nita looked down at the concrete floor.  _You’re welcome to remove any floorboards you find_.

 _I’ll let you know when I do. I did find your boyfriend though._ He sent her a photograph of what appeared to be a bookcase, over six feet in height, filled with books so old and desiccated that even Nita, unabashed bibliophile that she was, had no interest in touching them.

 _You’re lucky that you’re not in arm’s reach,_ Nita said tartly.  So far, she hadn’t found any desks with trays in them.  It was a good thing they had been made with some kind of space-age metal; she shuddered to think what might have happened had one of her desks from school been here.  Disintegration was the best she could have hoped for.  _Even the surroundings wouldn’t save you from being arm-punched for that._

_Luck? There’s no luck to it! This is by design!_

_Oh, so you’re afraid of my fist?_

_Yep. You don’t hold back and I bet you fight dirty_.

Nita couldn’t really argue with that.  _It’s being pragmatic_.

 _Well, I am_ pragmatically _deciding that there is nothing in this room that is going to tell us what happened._ Ronan uploaded what he had found. It seemed to be living quarters, based on the configuration of what appeared to be beds, again made with the peculiar material that made the desks. They were also covered in the Speech, or at least some variant of it.

 _Record everything you see with that writing on it,_ Nita said.  _Carmela can translate it for us later_.

_Oh yeah. She can do that linguistics thing._

_She’ll love it. She gets to read strange things and also flirt with you._

_Mm._ It was the most non-committal noise she had ever heard from Ronan. In fact, she didn’t think that he was capable of not holding strong opinions and sharing them loudly.  If it weren’t for the fact that he had been teasing her a few minutes ago, she would think that he was coming down with something.

_Is that the mm of your being too embarrassed to talk about it?_

_No_ , Ronan said.  _It’s me being distracted as I just found something._

_What?_

_If I knew I’d use its name rather than ‘something’, wouldn’t I?_  

He sent her a photograph of a strange blocky device, about four feet wide, with a horn on one end.  Nita was reminded of an old phonograph or gramophone, only much larger. 

 _I think it’s meant to be art_ , Ronan said after a moment.

_How can you say that?_

_Because I don’t understand what it is_.

Nita rolled her eyes.  _Also, are you embarrassed by Carmela’s flirting with you?_

 _I don’t see how that’s relevant to anything._ He sounded defensive.

_No, seriously, do you like her?_

_She’s okay._ Nita could all but see the awkward shrug that would accompany his words. _She is Kit’s sister, so … also I’m done with this room._

Nita raised her eyebrows at the abrupt subject change, but didn’t comment on it. Carmela was, after all, her friend and so she wasn’t sure that she wanted to hear that Ronan was polite to her simply because she was the sister to one of his friends. Instead, she fell silent and kept exploring.

The next three rooms were much the same as the first room that Nita discovered. Ronan’s rooms, judging by the images he was sending, were also similar.  As Nita rounded the corner and headed towards the corridor that would lead her back to where they had started, she noticed a set of stairs leading down.  

Her light revealed that there were fifteen stairs, ending with a door just like the ones that Nita had been opening already. She thought about exploring it, but she hadn’t finished with everything up on this level yet. While she suspected that there was nothing on this level that would help them find a way home, she wanted to be sure.  If it was just her, she would go, as history had told her that when she put her life on the line, she tended to succeed. 

 _But when it’s Kit and me, I’d still do it,_ she thought to herself ruefully.  Kit had made it clear that she did do that and it was very frustrating, and that was in their own universe where even if she died in the act, Kit could still go home. Here, that wasn’t an option.

She was startled out of her thoughts by a piercing sound, like a whistle.  Her heart hammered loudly in her chest and she looked around for the sound and what it could possibly mean. Perhaps they had triggered an alarm?

Then she recognised that it was part of a melody and her fright transformed into frustration.

 _Ronan, cut that out!_ she snapped.

_Did I frighten you?_

_I have a manual and I bet I can find a rock to throw through the walls to where you are,_ Nita said. _Why would you do that?_

 _It seemed like a good idea at the time._ She could hear him laugh, which did nothing to improve her mood.

_There is no time where whistling in a haunted house is a good idea!_

_We already established that there’s not enough energy for there to be ghosts — oh hey, I can see you!_

Nita looked down the corridor to see a familiar mess of dust blow up.  _I’d wave but you’d miss it,_ she said.  _Meet you back where we started?_

Nita checked the doors on her left hand side and confirmed what she had suspected - they led to the same rooms that she had checked previously. Her first impressions of the capacity of this facility were quickly dropping.  She had thought that it was something of a survival bunker, where hundreds of survivors had lived once, but the more she walked around it the more she suspected that this place had been built for one solitary purpose, and it was not continued survival. The internal fixtures and rooms were set out all wrong for that.

 _They all worked together to create this as their final act, and for what?_ she thought. She shivered.  She thought she might be able to guess what it was, if she had time, but she didn’t.   There was something terrible and alien that was here, in this universe with them, and she thought she could feel its tendrils on her wizardry.  She knew that she was more drained than she should be from the spell.

 _Yes, there is_ , Bobo said soberly.  _It’s not something I can help with either; it’s outside of wizardry._

_Outside of wizardry? How?_

Bobo shrugged, insofar as a disembodied voice could shrug.

“Not good news?” Ronan said as they were close enough for their life support bubbles to touch.  The bubbles merged into one,  which was just more practical and easier to deal with in regards to the energy burden. If something was draining their wizardry — and for what purpose Nita did not dare think about — then reducing the energy burden was just sensible.

“There’s something draining our wizardry, Bobo says,” Nita said.

Ronan looked ill.  “I thought so.”

“Also, I found a set of stairs leading down to a door.”

Ronan frowned.  “I saw a set leading up.”

Nita puffed out her lips as she exhaled.  “Did you notice all the writing on the walls?”

“It was hard not to,” Ronan pointed out.

“I wonder if they all lead here,” Nita said, resting a hand on one of the thick cables that ran the height of the wall.

“Oh, that’s a thought,” Ronan said.  “Fortunately, I have a spell for that.”  He gestured with his hands and the wall closest to them went translucent.  Now it was easy to see the thick cables linking each room up to the central cables.

“That answers that,” Nita said.

“Whatever ‘that’ means,” Ronan said sourly.  “It’s missing a power source.”

“Yeah,” Nita said. She pursed her lips in thought.  “Ordinarily it’d be a wizard who’s the power source —”

“Or a wizard who specializes in being a power source, like how the cats do it.”

“Or that,” Nita said. “But neither you or I do that. And the energy consumption for whatever this is must be enormous if they need this much of the Speech to describe it.”

“I don’t think we’re meant to be the power source,” Ronan said thoughtfully.  “I think they collect power from somewhere and store it.”

“If it was a normal spell, there’d just be a wizard’s circle,” Nita agreed, nodding.  “And these power lines have to lead from somewhere to somewhere.”

“Which is where our stairs come from,” Ronan said.  He sighed.  “That means we’re splitting up again?”

“We don’t have to.”

“It would be faster though.” He grinned then. “Besides, the more space between me and your temper, the better!”

“Maybe if you weren’t so _annoying_ , I wouldn’t need to hit you,” Nita said. “Really, who whistles in a haunted house?”

“Again with the ghost stories! If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were hoping for a ghostie to show up.”

“It’s a good thing you do,” Nita said.  “So I’ll take the downstairs and you take the upstairs?”

“Sounds good,” Ronan said. He turned away from her.

Nita realised that there was one more question she had forgotten to ask.  Given how the Mars intervention had played out, perhaps they should be more aware of the interaction between fantasy and wizardry.  “Ronan?”

He turned back. “Yeah?”

“How did it end?”

“How did what end?”

“The book. How did that book end?”

Ronan shook his head in obvious disbelief.  “I can’t believe you’re still on about that. It ended with Nazis summoning an intellivore from another dimension to win World War II,” he said.  “Once it won the war it ate all the energy in the universe — I _told_ you it didn’t end well.”

That was a little too close to their current situation for comfort and Nita regretted asking.  “Could you maybe read something a little more positive next time?” she suggested.  “Especially if you know that these dimensions are real.  Do you like giving yourself nightmares?”

“I read it years ago,” Ronan protested.  “Long before you showed up with your magic Power-finding tongue.”

“There was no tongue!”

“Probably for the best; I was already jumpy,” Ronan said. He breathed out and laughed nervously. “This might be the Lone Power’s plan, you know. Make us worry ourselves to death. Though, I’ve been thinking: where are the bodies?”

Nita wished that he had not said that, as she too had been wondering the same thing.  The Speech requires a living being to speak it, and all the writing on the walls, even if it was something that she did not recognise, had to be written by living beings.  While she was not hoping to find dead bodies, she was confused as to where they had gone. It was like the architects of this spell, for that was all that this could possibly be, had finished their work and simply disappeared.

“Let’s hold that thought,” she said.  “Save it until we get home.”

“Right,” Ronan said. He nodded.  “Well, if you see anything that looks like the Lone Power, blow it up for me?”

“No promises.” She found herself smiling regardless, a wry quirk of her lip that owed more to self-deprecation than actual amusement, and headed to the stairs leading down to the locked door.

* * *

The room inside the locked door was not as large as she had expected. She had expected it to be about the same size as the floor above it — as structurally that made sense — but instead the door had opened to a long corridor leading to a much smaller room.  The smaller room was about a third of the size of the floor above it and positioned in the exact centre, as if the building had been built around an axis that all must revolve around.

Of course, that was not the thing that had captured Nita’s attention.  That was the wizard’s circle, two metres in diameter, in the centre of the room and connected to what looked to be no less than sixteen generators.  She remembered when she had gone on summer camp that there had been a few in case they had lost power to their cabins, but they have certainly never had sixteen.

 _I found the wizard’s circle_ , she said to Ronan.  _And a whole lot of generators._ She sent him photographs of the circle and the generators.

 _Oh?_ Ronan said. He sounded distracted, and after a long moment added as if an afterthought,  _do they work?_

 _I literally just found them,_ Nita observed dryly, making a skeptical face despite the fact that Ronan could not see it. It would come through in her tone, and that was all that mattered.  _Besides, how should I know?_

There was silence, and then Ronan said _I was going to suggest kicking them but that doesn’t work_.

Nita’s eyebrows went up. That wasn’t quite the response she had expected. Kicking them, certainly, but not that he had already done it to whatever he had found. _You didn’t.  What did you even kick, anyway?_

_I think it’s part of a solar panel array._

Nita couldn’t resist the quip.  _You know what a solar panel array is? Are there even sunny days in Ireland?_

She could hear Ronan’s annoyance as he replied, _About five or ten?_

_In total?_

Now she really could hear Ronan rolling his eyes in his voice. _Yes, in the history of Ireland there have been five sunny days. Really, now, Miss Neets, you know better than that._

Teasing Ronan was honestly more fun than she had remembered and Nita resolved to schedule it into her weekly planner.  She could see why Carmela made a point to do it, if he was like this with her and she didn’t know Ronan half as well as Nita did.

 _So what happened when you kicked them?_ She prompted.

 _I swore at them when they_ pragmatically _refused to cooperate._

_I swear I can throw this rock through the ceilings to hit you in the face. Why are you so fixated on that word, anyway?_

_It’s funny,_ Ronan said, and that she supposed was the end of it.  _Besides, I think I can get it working._

_You? I didn’t know you were mechanically minded!_

_I’m not really,_ Ronan said, and sounded somewhat reticent about the admission. It was odd, as they both already knew that it was not his specialty.  _But Kit asked me to help out with one of his projects once. I think I know what to do._

Nita took the opportunity to inspect the generators.  They looked a little like the ones that they had used on summer camp.  She thought, from what little she knew, that there was power already stored in all of the generators.  She wasn’t able to work out precisely how much, but they didn’t look full.

She carefully skirted the lines of the wizard’s circle as she checked all the generators.  She didn’t think it was active, but she wasn’t sure what might trigger it or what it might do to her if she did.  It meant that she had to jump-step over the conduit-cables linking the generators to the edges of the circle, but she supposed she was due some exercise in any event.

As she reached the last one there was a loud thunk that almost caused her to jump out of her skin.  

 _I got it to work_ , Ronan said belatedly.  _Did anything happen?_

 _You shortened my lifespan,_ Nita said, clutching her hand to her chest to press against her hammering heart.  _Also I think the generators are turning on_.

_Great, I’ll be down in a minute._

Nita hop-stepped to where she had entered the room, and frowned. There was something shimmering in the wizardry circle, growing stronger as she watched.  _Can we boost that_? She asked Bobo.

 _I can if we need to_ , Bobo said. 

As she watched, the shimmering stabilised into a full length image of a person’s silhouette, with not enough detail to make out anything more than a general shape. They were a head taller than Nita, with a stocky build that suggested strength and power.  Nita was instantly envious.

“Dai stiho,” the woman said in a warm contralto, her words with the same lilt that Ronan had.  “You are on errantry and if you are we have succeeded in creating a miracle at last.  After wizardry came to us, we were asked to make a Choice. You must have chosen differently to us, but we? We heard that there was a monster who would hurt us, and so we created a bigger monster to hurt that Power first.”

“Oh boy,” Nita said aloud. She knew where this was going. History was littered with cultures who had thought to try and outsmart the Lone Power.  The best outcome was stasis — and she knew very well that becoming stagnant was hardly the Powers’ intention — and the more aggressive a culture became, the more terrible the consequences. Some had sought to stave off death, or breed furiously to balance out the death rate. However, the worst fates were left to the species who tried to fight the Lone Power with similar tactics and become worse than It in the end.

“It had worked, at first. Then we realised our mistake.  We too had It inside us, and It was as bound by wizardry as we were. As It faded, so did our wizardry. Our monster slipped its leash.”  The silhouette shrugged hopelessly.  “It eats energy, of course. Life. You cannot fix our monster. Our universe will soon become cold and dead.  I pray that when we return to Timeheart, the Powers forgive us for what we have done to their gift of a universe.”

The recording paused, and for a moment Nita thought that it had frozen.  Then, she heard a swallow.  “Please, take our gift, and fix our mistake. Let everyone go home, and leave this universe to die.”

The recording faded away.  Nita looked down at her feet and blinked away tears.  _Did you get all that_? she asked Bobo.

 _Yes,_ Bobo said.

“Not that it matters,” she heard a cool, cruel voice say and her head snapped up. She _knew_ that voice, the casual malice with which It managed to imbue Its every word, and she knew who It would be. 

Today, the Lone Power was tall and slender, with red-gold hair neatly combed and styled, and dressed impeccably in a black tailored business suit.  He was, as always, inhumanly handsome that in novels would sound impossibly attractive but instead made him look frightening and uncanny.  

Nita swallowed, squared her shoulders, and shifted her feet apart.  “Greeting and defiance, Fairest and Fallen,” she said, and was pleased that her voice came out strong and unafraid.

“And to you, little lost wizard,” It said.  “Where’s your shadow?  I’d have never thought to see you separated from him.  Do you think he minds always being the lesser wizard?”

“I think,” Nita said carefully, “that you have a very different idea of what it means to be a wizard than we do.”

“I have seen many wizards,” the Lone Power said.  “Far more than you could _dream_ of. If you live long enough, perhaps you’ll be able to learn what I know. It’s always about _status_. It’s always about being better, being more powerful, being the one recognized instead of your far more famous partner.  I look forward to seeing you realize that, right when your partnership breaks.”

Nita had any number of hotly angry retorts that she kept caged behind her teeth by force of will.  She knew that the Lone Power wanted her to fire back with something ill-considered to use against her, and that knowledge was barely enough to stop her defending Kit and their partnership. 

Unfortunately, her resolve went out the window when the door to the room slammed open behind her.  She would have been startled by the force of the opening but in a way she had known it was coming. The Lone Power, after all, did appear to have the power to appear whenever it would cause the most angst for the wizard it was in front of. She just hoped that Ronan would keep his mouth shut.  Judging by the naked, sick, worry on his face, Ronan wasn’t sure that he would.  He was prone to talking when he was nervous, Nita had found.

The Lone Power laughed, a rich, deep laugh that held a great deal of mirth and amusement.  “Ah, and the agent himself appears!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ronan said, and somehow Nita was unsurprised to hear that Ronan did not sound bewildered at all.

“I know that you do,” the Lone Power said.  “Didn’t My Brother tell you about this when He was still inside you?”

_Ronan?_

_It’s — it’s not what it sounds like. I can explain later, assuming there is one_.  Ronan sounded rattled, but that might be because Nita herself was rattled. The Lone Power did have that effect on people, and the idea that Kit might really think that he was merely her shadow rather than her equal was very disquieting.  As for what the Lone Power was saying about Ronan, she did genuinely believe that he would tell her what was really going on afterward. She trusted him, and that had yet to steer her wrong in the past.

“Let me tell you how this will go,” the Lone Power said, so calm and genial, like a dear uncle telling a story to a beloved niece or nephew.  It made Nita tense, because whenever the Lone Power sounded like that it did not bode well for anyone.  “He will pretend that he just wants to be friends, while nursing that deviant little crush on his. How terrible, to love the lover of a friend.”

Nita frowned.  “We kissed once. I don’t think that means we’re _lovers_.”

“Oh,” and the Lone Power shook It’s head, gazing upon her fondly.  “Whoever said he loved _you_?” It said, with cruel gentleness.

Nita realized three things in quick succession: Ronan had a crush on Kit; the Lone Power thought that she would hate him for it; and judging by the sick misery that Ronan was radiating, he thought she would too.  That was the last straw, and coupled with what the wizard recording had told her she understood what was going on.

“Are you seriously telling me that you think I’d be _hurt_ that he has a crush on Kit?” Nita’s scorn was entirely natural, as was the laugh.  

Ronan started.  “What?” he said.

“I cannot believe you thought that was going to work. I swear, when this universe’s little monster sucked your power it also sucked your _brains_.”

“There is enough power here that I will see you dead for that!” the Lone Power said, and it would have been a snap capable of terrifying the most courageous of wizards but for the knowledge that Nita had.

“No, you won’t,” she said and smiled broadly.  “I understand what’s going on. We can’t kill you — even weak as you are, you are still a Power.  The best we can do is defeat you. But … you can’t kill us either.”

“Can’t I?” It said, impossibly soft.

“No, you can’t.  You don’t have the power to, which means you also don’t have the power to go back to Timeheart either.”

Ronan had been staring at her as if she had grown a second head.  She’d been watching him out of the corner of her eye as she spoke to the Lone Power, and so managed to see the moment where he understood where she was headed. His smile was more forced than her own, but it heartened her to see him try.  “You need us to get home, don’t you?” he said slowly.  “Do you even know the way?”

“So rather than just _asking us_ to help you get home, you decided that you’d rather we exhaust ourselves and die here with you.”  

Judging by the Lone Power’s furious, impotent expression, that was exactly what It had planned, and in that moment Nita could feel nothing but pity for the Power so proud and so caught up in Its proudness that It could not bear to ask for help.

“Come on,” she said, and gestured to the wizard circle that stood between the Lone Power and herself and Ronan.  “You may not remember the way anymore, but I do.”

For a moment, she thought that the Lone Power would refuse and cling to Its pride even now at the end of all things. She thought that maybe this one had come before the one she had changed with her space pen under Fred’s desperate light on her very first day as a fully-fledged wizard, that It was not capable of change or growth but instead forever bound to make the same decisions It had always made.

“Why would you do this? There is no hope that I will treat you more leniently the next time you meet Myself.  Is it simply out of the goodness of your heart?” It imbued the last four words with a derisive sneer, as if they were the most horrible thing It could imagine.

“Because I was asked,” Nita said.  “Because this universe will end soon, and it’s too cruel to leave you here, unable to find your way home.”

Ronan cleared his throat. Nita looked across at him. He still looked miserable, but now also resigned.  “And,” he said, “Even if you are a complete arsehole who may have just utterly ruined my life, no one deserves to die alone. Not even you.”

“Honesty even at the end,” the Lone Power said caustically.  It stepped into the wizard’s circle.  “Send me home.”

Nita prepared the spell, designating the power source to be the generators rather than through her, only to be stopped by Ronan.

_It’s my turn, remember?_

Nita studied him for a moment, then transferred the spell to him.  “All right,” she said.  She didn’t say _I trust you_ , but from the quick, half-smile he gave her, he understood what she was not saying.  He cast the spell, and the Lone Power left, without even making a leaving retort.

“I don’t think he’s ruined your life,” Nita said into the silence left by the Lone Power and Its words.

Ronan snorted skeptically.  “How could it not?”

“Well, I’d be worried if you _didn’t_ have a crush on Kit,” Nita said.  “He is very good looking after all. And smart, and funny, and will always have your back in a crisis.  Anyone would have a crush on him!”

Ronan huffed a laugh, more of a release of nervous tension then his being truly amused by what Nita had to say.  He took a breath and let it out slowly, before asking, “How did you work out Its game so quickly?”

“Oh,” Nita said and shrugged. “It’s not the first time I’ve met someone who was a jerk to scare you away from the truth.”

“I am _not_ like the Lone Power.” Ronan sounded very indignant, and it was that that caused the tension to drain out of Nita.

“You’re not,” Nita agreed.  “But maybe It is more like us than It wants to admit.”

Ronan looked very dubious about this.  “Maybe,” he said. “But I think you are far too sympathetic towards It.”

“I wouldn’t say sympathetic,” Nita said.  “Pity, maybe. But we can debate this later.”  She reached out and took Ronan’s hand in her own.  “Let’s go home.”

Together, they walked over the boundary of the wizard’s circle, and said the spell to go home together.

A minute after they had teleported out, there was an assault on the room by a shadow so dark that black did not do it justice. It was not the black that comes from the absence of light, but instead the blackness that comes from a constant, painful hunger for light.  From the circle blazed a light so bright that even the monster was satiated for a moment, and then all light went out, leaving behind an empty, dead universe, made up of dried up planets and burned out cinders of stars.  The monster, for it never had been given a name, was gone, taken back into Timeheart.  After all, what is loved, lives, and the Powers are boundless in their love, even for creatures so terribly misshapen as this agonised creature that had been true to its terrible purpose.

* * *

 A week later, Nita was sitting in the only free chair in Ronan’s flat, a computer chair. Ronan had moved into a very small studio apartment not so long ago when he started his university studies, paying for it with a collection of jobs both on and off Earth, and had taken an approach to unpacking that meant he only unpacked boxes when he needed their contents.  This meant that while his sporting equipment, clothes, and books were the first things to be unpacked, boxes labelled ‘Winter Clothes’ were left stacked where they had been left during the move. It also meant getting around Ronan’s unit meant taking your life into your own hands. She wondered how he hadn’t broken his neck yet.

“Do you want a hand unpacking this?” she asked, gesturing to the boxes piled haphazardly throughout the tiny space.  She was surprised that all of the boxes did not give Ronan claustrophobia; they were making her feel uncomfortable and she didn’t live here.  “Kit and I’d be happy to come help if it meant you weren’t going to be crushed by your hoarding problem.”

“No, it’s okay,” Ronan said from the kitchen where he was fixing two cups of tea.  “I have mid-semester assignments soon. I’ll need something to procrastinate with.”

“Seriously,” Nita said, glancing around the studio apartment.  “You can’t have guests sitting on your bed. That’s kind of weird.”

“That’s the plan,” Ronan said with a wolfish smile.  “If you’re not here for my bed, I don’t want you here.”

“Oh, very funny,” Nita said, rolling her eyes.  “I see the real reason you moved out. It wasn’t because you were spending hours on public transport, it was so that your parents didn’t know who you were in a relationship with.”

“Something like that,” Ronan agreed, handing Nita her cup of tea. He sat down on the bed, as the sofa was currently housing boxes labelled ‘rugby equipment’ and ‘household tools’.  “Why, do you tell your father everything you and Kit do? Because I’m pretty sure Kit is holding out on me.”

“Well,” Nita said, with a wince.  “Wouldn’t that be cruel?”

Ronan frowned.  “Not particularly,” he said.  “It’s not like I’m _hopelessly pining_ for him or anything like that.”

Nita’s lips quirked in a wry smile.  “That’s kind of why I’m here,” she said into the rising steam from the cup she held cradled in her hands.  “After everything that happened, I wanted to check that everything was okay.”

Ronan raised his eyebrows.  “Why wouldn’t it be?” 

Nita looked at him skeptically.  “You did say that you thought it would _ruin your life_.”

“I was under stress,” Ronan said.  “Anyone’s prone to a bit of melodrama under those circumstances.”  If Nita had to describe what he sounded like, she thought ‘cagey’ would best encapsulate it.

“I just want you to know that I meant it. I really don’t mind.”

Ronan looked faintly appalled. “I think I’m going to just go and find a hole to die in if we keep this going.”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Nita said.  A sense of the perverse seized her as she added, “Besides, knowing you, you’d go out in a blaze of ridiculously self-sacrificing glory, making us all feel like jerks for not realizing what you meant sooner.”

“You are still _so_ bitter about that,” Ronan said, bemused.  “I don’t see the problem. You worked out my meaning, the universe was saved, and I’m still alive. Given your history, I think you were just jealous I came up with it first.”

Nita did not acknowledge his argument, in part because she knew it was probably true. Nita was far more comfortable when it was her taking the big risks and making the big sacrifices than standing back and letting others do it.  Whenever she had to let someone else take over and make a sacrifice, she always felt terribly powerless. Perhaps this is what Kit thought when she cut him out of her decisions. If she was honest with herself, she suspected that was true.

“What I don’t understand,” she said instead, “is Carmela. I thought you had a crush on her.”

“You were meant to.”

“Did Carmela know?”

“Oh, yeah.” Ronan snorted ruefully out of the corner of his mouth. “She had it worked out ages ago.”

“She did?”  

The look Ronan gave her was profoundly amused.  “Did you really think she’d keep flirting with me like that if she didn’t _know_?”

That made sense.  Carmela was not someone to bash her head against a brick wall. She was far more likely to slip behind the wall when no-one was watching and then claim it as her own. Now that Nita thought about it, her flirting with Ronan was not a bit like how she was when it came to Filif.  It was exaggerated, almost comically so, and she said so.

“The idea,” Ronan went on, “was to distract _everyone_.  Carmela’s plan.  If you’re all watching her chase after me, you’re not paying attention to what I’m doing other than evading her, are you?”

This was true, and was the thing that had been bothering her.

“So,” Nita said.  “Should you be changing your name in the Speech yet?”

“No,” Ronan said.  “No need to rush into that. There’s time yet for that.”

Nita looked around his apartment and thought that she understood. When people change, it is either gradual, or in response to something shocking. Ronan had had two very large shocks to his identity in the last year: first the Champion residing in him, and then the Champion no longer residing in him.  Couple that with what she now understood to be an uncertain exploration of his sexuality, and it was little wonder that he felt alone and uncertain in his own head.  It had taken her a week of mulling over it to realize that was why Ronan whistled.  It must be very silent in his head right now.

“Yeah,” she said.  “Take your time. You’ve got all of it in the world.”

“Is that a threat?” Ronan said.  “You are the seer after all.”

“Only you would consider not dying young a threat,” Nita said, rolling her eyes fondly.  

She had been afraid that the events with the Lone Power would change their relationship —  she thought that that had been Its intention.  She had read stories about girls whose friendships had ended because of a love triangle, and she had feared that this might have happened to their little triad. Instead, after thinking about it, she didn’t see why it would; they were friends first and foremost, and that was more than strong enough to stand up to whatever stress a love triangle would have brought.  The Lone Power may have intended to fracture their friendship, even break it entirely, but as she sat on Ronan’s computer chair, drinking strongly brewed tea from one of his chipped mugs, she thought that everything would be all right.


End file.
